Ireland telling of a
disastrous case where the new Irish Land Act, of which even Dan had
hoped great things, had failed more signally than usual.

"Listen to this," he burst forth almost as soon as Boase was seated,
"and tell me if that fool Government doesn't want hanging as high as
those poor Fenians! Here's a man in my own country, where the little
cabin is that saw me born, before ever me father took me to the new
country; and his landlord has told him he'll not give him a penny piece
for the shed and the new wall and the garden patch he's made out of the
bare earth with his own hands. And him going to America, and the money
the scoundrel ought to pay him for them would take his family across in
comfort, and his wife with child at the blessed moment!"

Boase held his head in comic bewilderment, and Dan laughed a little and
calmed down.

"And why can't he make the landlord pay, you'd ask? Because the spalpeen
had it in writing from him when the Bill was passed that if he put on a
new roof to keep the wet off a dying child he should never enforce the
terms of the Act against him.... Didn't I vote against the Act because
of the very clause allowing that? I knew the landlords and the devil's
tricks they'd be up to.... Saving your presence, Ishmael, old fellow,
landlords are the scum of the earth!"

"At least you can't accuse me of being an absentee landlord," said
Ishmael, smiling.

"No, indeed," chimed in Vassie almost indignantly. "If you knew all
he's done here, Dan, it's like a miracle. I don't believe wages or the
standard of living could be lower in Ireland than they were here when
Ishmael took the place in hand."

"I believe you," said Flynn. "It's myself thinks Ishmael has it in him
to be a grand reformer; that's why I can't bear to see him wasting
himself over morals and manure when he could be working away at the
bettering of the world."

Ishmael laughed, but the Parson took up the suggestion seriously.

"The world's a large order," he said, "but this particular corner of it,
perhaps.... There's several matters down here would be the better for
the gentry taking more interest in them. These new school boards, for
instance--"

"Ah, the children...!" cried Flynn, the light of the enthusiast
springing into his fine eyes. "They're what matter, when all's said and
done. If we get the children we get the world. Every generation has in
it the millennium, the seeds of Utopia."

"The phantom cities of Fata